Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
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Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#2[deleted]
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#3This was linked recently:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hc9Eg6erp6hk9bWhn/the-quantu...
> An electron is not a billiard ball, and it’s not a crest and trough moving through a pool of water. An electron is a mathematically different sort of entity, all the time and under all circumstances, and it has to be accepted on its own terms.
> The universe is not wavering between using particles and waves, unable to make up its mind. It’s only human intuitions about quantum mechanics that swap back and forth. The intuitions we have for billiard balls, and the intuitions we have for crests and troughs in a pool of water, both look sort of like they’re applicable to electrons, at different times and under different circumstances. But the truth is that both intuitions simply aren’t applicable.
> If you try to think of an electron as being like a billiard ball on some days, and like an ocean wave on other days, you will confuse the living daylights out of yourself.
> Yet it’s your eyes that are wobbling and unstable, not the world.
This also applies to light.
IMHO, light is light. When we view it as a particle, we are wrong. When we view it as a wave we are also wrong, but in a different way.
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#4Wave particle duality used to stress me out before I read Feynman talk about it.
"Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.....
There is one lucky break, however—electrons behave just like light. The quantum behavior of atomic objects (electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, and so on) is the same for all, they are all “particle waves,” or whatever you want to call them. So what we learn about the properties of electrons (which we shall use for our examples) will apply also to all “particles,” including photons of light."
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#5Yes
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#6I think the tendency to see everything as discrete units is a very human thing.
Would love to see how alien species with fundamentally different perceptions approach these concepts.
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#7Wave particle duality used to stress me out before I read Feynman talk about it. "Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen..... There is one lucky break, however—electrons behave just like…
Single beam of electrons diffracts like single beam of light, but otherwise electrons behave very differently than light: two electron beams interfere with each other, while two light beams do not.
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#8I think the tendency to see everything as discrete units is a very human thing. Would love to see how alien species with fundamentally different perceptions approach these concepts.
I'm not so sure that other intelligent life could have evolved without having the same way of reducing complexity as we do.
It is the essence of modelling: when you are interested only in certain aspects of an environment you try to categorise and classify your subject accordingly.
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#9Wave particle duality used to stress me out before I read Feynman talk about it. "Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen..... There is one lucky break, however—electrons behave just like…
Single beam of electrons diffracts like single beam of light, but otherwise electrons behave very differently than light: two electron beams interfere with each other, while two light beams do not.
Two coherent beams of light will absolutely interfere.
Re: Is light fundamentally a wave or a particle?
#10Yes
This is the answer I came here to make/find. Thank you.